volunteers

Here are some of what's come up in my yard while I haven't had time to weed. Lucky me.

I've always loved cornflowers, but I've never had them growing anywhere but the roadside--when I had a roadside. These are in the middle of my peonies somehow. The blue is much more intense than it looks here, but not really darker.

I love Queen Anne's lace even more. This is growing in the cracks in the pavement, so when it dies back this fall I'll need to remove it, but I plan to enjoy it now.

I can't see them from the house, or even the deck, so they're mostly going to be enjoyed as cut flowers.

Here is something I don't recognize. It came up between the cobblestones of my patio, among a lot of other woody plants that don't flower, and that I haven't had time to pull when young, and that now I'll have to dig painfully out.

Unlike the cornflowers, the camera gets the accurate color here.

And last but not least, not volunteers but conscripts:

blooming

The first peony bud has opened. The second one is still tight.

Its color is just right to set off the reddish pink glass things I have on the chest.

I seem to have dug up more white iris at the old house than I realized I had. I've brought one indoors, but it's in the process of fading, so I photographed the ones outside. (In better light, too.)

Then there's this purplish color. I have some different purple ones with only one blossom open that was damaged by the rain and wind.

The yellow ones waited so long to show any color that I thought I had failed to dig any up and move them, since nothing was in bloom when I did the digging, but at last, they showed up.

My narcissus should have bloomed by now, but not so far. The leaves are up, and I certainly gave them enough wood ash over the winter to encourage flower formation, but I'm pleased with how well everything has done the year after getting moved. Moving is stressful for plants as well as people.

buds

Finally there are signs that things are going to bloom. 

Purple iris:

Mystery iris:

Pink peonies:

The day before this picture there was only one peony bud, so I am hoping for more.

sparkly sprinkler

I want one! This one's at work. I have nothing that needs watering with more than a watering can, and this lovely thing spreads water much too far for what I have, but since I took this video with my iPod I keep watching it over and over.

I hope it plays. I had some difficulty with it in preview.

spring progress

Things are coming up after being dormant all winter.
My peonies, for one.

Green on green on green doesn't make for a dramatic photograph, but the new peony leaves can be seen against the concrete square next to the downspout. 

My yard has many, many violets, both standard purple ones and pale lavender with dark violet veins. This is the first picking.

Here's the first and second daffodils that bloomed. I was relieved when my Thalia daffodils bloomed today, but I forgot to take any pictures. I'm a little worried that none of the solid yellows are showing yet. I dug things up in a great hurry, and the tenants had moved things around (mainly dividing iris I should have divided when I first moved in) but I'm sure I got some plain yellow ones. We'll see.

officially spring

I changed the plate on the mantel as usual. The one my mother painted with wild roses is somewhat appropriate, though it is much too early for any to bloom.

I moved the rosemary onto the side porch in the shade, to acclimatize to the outdoors before it spends the summer on the front porch in the sun.

I finally found the daffodils coming up through the leaves. Four days ago they were under snow, too, but still.

And I got a shot of my neighbor's new birdhouse.

If you look closely at the blue segment on the left you can see the hole cut for a door. So far, I have seen no one building a nest there. It might be rather hot and poorly ventilated.

crying wolf

I saw the truck putting up this sign (and its fellow in the opposite direction) last Thursday at dusk. Friday  (since I worked just down the street) I know that no work was done. Sunday the snow and sleet started that are forecast to last through Tuesday, so the likelihood that anyone would start digging up the street was small indeed.

This kind of thing annoys me because the more people learn to ignore signs like these the more the workers are endangered when they are there. If you're spending a million dollars on a small neighborhood sewer project (which is certainly needed!) surely you can spend some thought on planning as well.